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OVERVIEW

This lesson provides three types of reports that can be written and shared by kindergarten students. These reports allow young students to see themselves as writers with important information to share with others. In the first report, students report what they’ve learned about an apple using all five senses by completing a simple report form. In the second activity, they explore a variety of nonfiction media about animals of their choice. After they write journal pages recording simple information about the animals, completed pages are stapled together, and students create clay representations of their selected animals. In the final report, students use facts they have researched to create and share original riddles about selected animals.

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FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE

In her book The Writing Workshop, Katie Wood Ray reflects on what it means to be a writer: "I think it comes down to the essential nature of writing. Writing is something that you do, not something that you know, and when you think about it, that is an incredibly important understanding for us to have as teachers of writing." (30)

Ralph Fletcher and JoAnn Portalupi, in the introduction to their book Writing Workshop, stress the importance of the following factors for our students to become effective writers:

that students see themselves as writers,

that they develop a genuine feel for writing-its power and purpose, and

that they have a strong sense of audience-of real, interested readers. (x-xi)

This lessons gives three examples of reports that can be written by kindergarten students and other emergent readers and writers that will allow them to "do" writing and see themselves as writers with information to share with an interested audience.